Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says he’s combating the form of “politicized science that drove Froot Loops to the highest of the meals pyramid.”
President Donald Trump’s secretary of well being and human companies has made a nationwide model out of questioning regulatory seize, difficult false consensus and demanding transparency in public well being.
However on the subject of fracking in New York, Kennedy wasn’t the whistleblower. He was the mythmaker.
Will he apply the identical skepticism to the fracking ban he himself helped create?
In 2013, Kennedy personally lobbied then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo to desert a modest plan to allow simply 40 check wells for hydraulic fracturing to extract pure gasoline within the state’s Southern Tier.
His justification? A then-unreleased public well being examine from Pennsylvania’s Geisinger Well being System, which Kennedy claimed would quickly affirm the well being risks of fracking.
That examine was by no means revealed. However the delusion it supported proved helpful.
Cuomo reversed course. The check wells by no means opened.
And the fracking ban — initially pitched as momentary — hardened into everlasting coverage.
The injury was actual: Whereas neighboring Pennsylvania surged forward with an vitality increase, New York’s rural communities have been left behind.
Billions of {dollars} in vitality sources went untapped. 1000’s of good-paying jobs by no means materialized.
Native economies that would have been revitalized as a substitute fell additional into decline.
In 2009, the Southern Tier counties of New York had increased GDP per capita than their neighbors throughout the border in northern Pennsylvania. Then New York banned fracking, whereas Pennsylvania embraced it.
Over the following decade, the financial trajectories flipped.
A latest Heritage Basis examine evaluating these geologically comparable “Twin Tier” areas discovered that New York’s ban price its counties an estimated $11,000 per resident — or $27,000 per family — in misplaced financial output.
Whereas Pennsylvania noticed a increase in jobs, small-business progress and tax revenues, New York’s rural economic system stagnated.
From motels and eating places to trucking and native trades, fracking fueled a broad-based revival in Pennsylvania.
In banning it, New York didn’t simply shut the door on drilling — it shut out a whole period of alternative.
Now, Kennedy is the nation’s prime public well being official — and he’s able to revisit the very form of politicized, fear-based narratives he claims to oppose.
Kennedy has made a profession out of attacking what he calls “inconvenient science” — from vaccine security to Massive Meals’s grip on nationwide dietary tips.
He rails in opposition to media manipulation, company affect and authorities collusion with particular pursuits.
But when he’s critical about any of that, he should apply the identical customary to himself.
The arguments used to ban fracking in New York haven’t held up.
Oversight has improved. Expertise has superior. The environmental and well being dangers are way more manageable than the alarmist rhetoric of 2014 advised.
And but the ban stays — frozen in place by outdated speaking factors and a decade-old political resolution Kennedy helped orchestrate.
Fracking just isn’t with out environmental penalties. However neither is vitality poverty, rural financial decline or mass outmigration.
Public well being is about greater than air high quality — it’s about jobs, housing and alternative, too.
If Kennedy really desires to steer a nationwide dialog on science, well being and integrity, he ought to begin by revisiting the story he helped promote.
New York’s fracking ban was not grounded in rigorous science, however in worry, political strain and a conveniently timed delusion.
Kennedy doesn’t regulate vitality. However he does form how the nation thinks about public well being trade-offs and scientific belief.
He can’t have it each methods — decrying captured science when it fits his present agenda, whereas ignoring it when it advantages his private convictions or previous positions.
To revive public belief in science, Kennedy ought to name for a full, impartial evaluate of New York’s fracking ban.
This isn’t about pleasing the vitality trade — which has largely deserted hopes for fracking in New York — or about political leverage within the ongoing Structure Pipeline dispute between Trump and Gov. Kathy Hochul.
Fairly, it’s about Kennedy modeling the identical transparency and mental honesty he calls for from others in difficult established views. The credibility of his total mission is dependent upon it.
Something much less would affirm what many already suspect: that Kennedy’s combat in opposition to “politicized science” applies solely to causes he opposes — and by no means to the environmental narratives he helped create.
David Catalfamo, president of Capital Public Methods, was a communications director and vp for financial growth underneath Gov. George Pataki.
